Question, regarding TC Encore barrels.

[twoworms]

My question is do you think the Thompson Center Encore barrels in SS are soft?

The reason I ask is that my 500 S&W was shooting around 4" groups at 100 yards with my cast boolits. I cleaned the barrel real good and got most of the black crud out of the barrel. Next time at the range I could not keep it on a 8x10" sheet of paper at 100yards.

That night I checked the scope, rings, screws and so on. Then cleaned the barrel, after the cleaing I checked the crown and found that I had banged it up with my cleaning jag.

I'm thinking that I had pushed it out the end of the barrel and came back to hard and banged the jag into the crown. I have cleaned up the crown and plan to test fire with the same loads next time out.

Well, what do you think, soft or not?

Tim

[JSH]

You don't mention what your cleaning rod and jag are made of. I really doubt that either on did that.
Are you sure it was steel and not some lead hung up on a burr at the crown? If this is a brand new barrel, I would say it is a burr. TC's quality control leaves somthing to be desired at times.
Jeff

[twoworms]

JHS,

The rod is steel the jag was brass. I'm thinking you're right, the barrel has had problems from the start. I wonder it there was a poor crown all the time and I just missed it.

Tim

[lovedogs]

I've heard that many of the new G2's and Encores have poor quality control at times. Tales of poor barrels, chambers, and crowns are legion so I wouldn't be surprised if you just got a poor one. I don't have any Encores but have many SS bbls. Four on Contenders and several on various other brands. And I wouldn't call them soft. Machining characteristics are different from chrome moly. I'd describe SS as more ductile but not necessarily soft. Due to this characteristic it seems to me they break-in quicker, which is appreciated. But soft? I don't think so.